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It’s raining when Hinata sees it: a black cat in a pile of garbage, seeking shelter from the quite horrible weather. He shouldn’t be able to notice the cat right away, considering it is already dark; Hinata is on his way home from practice, his only source of light are the dim streetlights that do a horrible job at lighting his way, but he still noticed the cat anyway. It looks at him with wide, dark blue eyes, not particularly begging the redhead to scoop it up in his arms, just staring. Hinata hasn’t seen anything like it, but it does remind him of someone. Someone who had hair as dark and slick as its fur and eyes as bright yet dark as its eyes, so he tries to approach it and take it home with him.
The next day at practice, everyone who sees Hinata asks him why he got a scratch on his face.
Practice finished early, because there’s something to be fixed in the gymnasium. The sun is still up when Hinata leaves the school and starts his hike back to his house. He passes by the convenience store he always came by after practice. He passes by the park he always stopped by to play, even for just a short while, and Hinata passes by a line of vending machines on one side of the road, where he would stop by just to buy the milk drink that he always bought in school. He just passes by them; he doesn’t stop walking.
When Hinata stops by the garbage dump to check on the black cat he saw, he sees nothing there, just… garbage. It is disappointing, Hinata supposes, but maybe it had gone somewhere better than this heap of trash.
Maybe just like him.
…
Who?
Hinata tries to find the cat this time. When he finds the cat, it’s just staring at him, unmoving. The cat is in an alleyway where it is dark and dirty. The only thing he can see are its navy blue eyes glowing, watching him. He doesn’t try approaching it this time. Last time that happened, he had bandages on his face for a full week. Practice was horrible because of it, so Hinata just stays where he is and brings out a can of cat food he bought somewhere. He puts it down and makes his leave.
The next day, the cat is nowhere to be found, and the can doesn’t have the cat food in it anymore. In place of the cat food is a dead rat.
Hinata doesn’t even look for the cat. It goes to him by its own accord. In school.
Practice is almost over, so the team has a break. Hinata thinks it would be good to spend it outside, where it is a little hot still. Everyone else are inside the gym, so it’s quiet. He hears something rustle through the grass, and when he looks, he sees the cat quietly approaching him. He blinks, once, twice, until the cat is sitting in front of him, just staring at him. Waiting.
“…Hi, kitty,” Hinata starts, still not daring to touch the cat. It can still scratch his face again, or worse, his hand. He can’t risk that. He won’t be able to play volleyball that way.
The cat mewls, sounding angry, as if demanding something, and Hinata blinks again. This time, he dares to reach out his hand and pat the kitty on its head. The cat leans in to his touch. Its fur is like he thought it would be: smooth and soft. Its flat fur doesn’t really seem like it is both of that, but it is. It feels wonderful against his palm.
Hinata feels like crying. He knows this touch so well, but he can’t remember from where he felt it. It is too blurry, like a photograph faded by age and dirt and scratches.
It’s choking him, but he doesn’t stop petting the cat.
“Ah, sorry, Hinata-senpai!”
Hinata huffs as he lands on his feet, volleyball shoes squeaking against the gym floor. It isn’t directed at their setter, though, who is a first year. The toss from their setter ended up being too high for Hinata, but it isn’t like he’s mad. Hazel eyes shift from the ground towards the first year, who looks nervous.
“No, it’s okay!” Hinata says, smiling. “It’s a little too high, but the speed is good enough!”
The first year looks relieved after that. A clap resounds throughout the gym, and everyone looks at Ennoshita, their new captain.
“Okay guys,” he starts, eyes drifting from the clock towards everyone. “It’s time to clean up, first years’ turn to fix up the gym!”
And everyone scrambles to whatever they are supposed to do. Hinata is drinking from his water bottle when he hears the first years talking. Something about a setter that was supposed to be in Hinata’s year. It doesn’t make sense to him, though.
There is never a setter in his year.
Hinata is the first to leave practice, telling everyone a good job before leaving the gymnasium. He stops by the shoe racks where they leave their volleyball shoes and sees the cat in one of the shoe boxes. The one beside Hinata’s.
“Ah,” Hinata mutters under his breath. It is the one that remains unused this whole time. No one dares to put their volleyball shoes there. There was a time there were flowers in it, though. He doesn’t know why.
Hinata puts his shoes in his shoebox, and the cat leaps from the shoebox it is occupying, following Hinata as he walks away from the gym.
So Hinata brings the cat home. Finally.
He likes the cat, and by the looks of it, the cat likes him too (finally). He isn’t so sure what to name the cat, even though it has been staying with him for a week now. Should he ask his senpais? Natsu could help, too, but Hinata shakes the idea off immediately. She’ll probably just name the cat with some shitty name like Princess or something. No.
In his room, the cat just quietly watches him plop down his bed. It is sitting on his table, well-behaved, like it knows very well he is still just a visitor here. Hazel eyes look up at navy blue ones, and Hinata sits up and takes the cat in his arms. The cat nuzzles in his touch.
The cat is well-behaved, but sometimes it is pretty rude that once it almost scratched Hinata again. When Hinata feels stressed, it would crawl on top of his lap and just lay there, mewling until Hinata smiles. It is both kind and annoying, it hurt.
“You remind me of someone,” he finally says, like the cat will understand him. “I don’t remember who, though.”
Hinata’s voice cracks when he says that.
“So Shouyou came to me asking to name this cat he found,” Nishinoya states, folding the ridiculously large net in his small hands. Tanaka just looks at him, throwing one volleyball he picked up towards the ball basket. Ennoshita ducks when the ball flies towards him, and the ball hits against the wall, earning Tanaka a complaint from the current captain. It is the third years’ turn to clean the gym, so most of the kouhais have gone home. Though not part of Karasuno Volleyball Club any longer, Daichi and Sugawara stayed to help the current third years with the cleanup after coaching them with Coach Ukai.
“Oh?” Sugawara starts, picking up the volleyball that Tanaka threw. “A stray cat?”
“Yup!” answers the libero, calling for Daichi to help him with the net. “It crept me out when he showed me the cat, though. Like, reaaallyyyy crept out!”
“Noya-san is scared of cats?” Tanaka snickers. “Really?!”
“Shut uuuup! I’m not!” Nishinoya retorts. “And I’m still talking, hey! Anyway, when he showed me the cat, I know exactly what to name him!”
“Really,” Daichi says, “what’d you tell Hinata?”
“Tobio!” Nishinoya replies loudly, like he is really proud of the name he has chosen. “I said to name the cat Tobio! Or maybe Tobi, to make it cuter, right?”
Silence fills the gym.
Tobio.
The name keeps repeating itself in Hinata’s head. He looks at the cat sleeping quietly beside him. Its fur is dark, so dark that it feels like it’s going to suck everything in. He loves touching its fur. Silky and smooth, just like the hair of someone he knew. Someone he loved to touch.
Hinata can’t remember, though.
Sometimes, Hinata dreams.
It doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it is usually something about someone: playing with someone, arguing with someone, walking home with someone.
Hinata will dream coming by the convenience store with someone after practice, stopping by the park to play with someone, even for just a short while, and stopping by a line of vending machines on one side of the road, where someone will buy the milkbox he always bought at school.
Sometimes, Hinata will even dream shivering under someone’s touch, pulling someone closer to him, kissing someone, moaning whenever his and someone’s skin would touch.
He’ll dream, and when he wakes up, he’d have tears in his eyes, his chest heavier than it did the last time he dreamt. A name will always be at the tip of his tongue, itching to leave, always waiting to be spoken out loud, but Hinata never says it. He won’t because he’ll forget about it the moment he remembers it, and then he’ll forget how to breathe too; he will choke, and he will feel as if he is drowning.
Hinata doesn’t always dream, but when he does, he always cries.
“Hinata-senpai, how was Kageyama-senpai like?”
Then all the third years and second years stop whatever they are doing, wide, surprised eyes on Hinata and the first year setter. Even Tsukishima looks at Hinata with something the shorter middle blocker can’t understand. Some first years eye one another, mumbling to themselves, then Yamaguchi shooshes them to quiet down. No one knows what to do with Hinata and their setter, though.
“I heard he was amazing,” the first year says, eyes sparkling and full of admiration. “He even managed to receive the Best Setter Award last year, even just as a first year, didn’t he?”
Hinata just quietly eyes the first year talking to him. Scrutinising, looking for answers. Even those who aren’t familiar with his bright and bubbly personality—the first years in particular—felt uncomfortable for their setter. All the more for the second years and third years, who saw Hinata’s change from the start of the year.
“I…,” Hinata starts, trailing off, looking confused. It is then Tsukishima intervenes, which is surprising. He tells the setter off, promising to talk to him about the topic later. Tsukishima never bothers talking too much with anyone else in the club, unless he is to say something shit-worthy or if it is something important.
Is this important?
Hinata realises he is upset by something, considering the cat crawls all over him, deciding to stay on his lap once again. He sits in his study table, trying to make sense from his math homework. The cat mewls, and whatever Hinata is upset about, he seems to have forgotten it now, even the small talk he had with their setter. He can’t remember what it was they talked about.
He absentmindedly pets the cat, remembering the name Nishinoya told him.
Tobio.
Hinata looks at the cat that is purring at his touch. He can’t get himself to call it with that name. He feels like his chest is being nailed every time he tries to say it.
He realises he hates the name.
The cat has made it a habit to follow Hinata wherever he goes.
He isn’t sure why, though, but maybe Natsu is at fault somewhere. Since the cat is finally at ease, leaving Hinata’s room is a no-brainer. Maybe Natsu got her hands on the cat at some point and… probably did things to it. Hinata can tell, because whenever it sees Natsu, it will just run back in his room and won’t come out until he calls it. So now, when Hinata leaves the house to go to school in the morning, it always runs after him, following him as he slides down the mountain path on his bike, and Hinata always finds it waiting for him in the empty shoebox beside Hinata’s, outside the gym at nightfall.
Hinata isn’t really complaining. He likes the extra companion wherever he goes (classrooms and hallways weren’t counted, though). He can get used to it.
When Hinata and the cat pass by the line of vending machines, he notices a few minutes later that the cat has stopped following him. He goes back to the line of vending machines and finds it staring at one of them, head tilted to the side, as if curious. Hinata stands beside the cat, staring down at it.
“What’s wrong, kitty?” Hinata asks. He still can’t get himself to call the cat by that name. He just can’t.
The cat makes no response. It just keeps staring at the vending machine. Blinking, Hinata looks at the machine the kitty is staring at. Hinata doesn’t really take a moment to think about what he is doing, but a few coins and a stuck drink later, Hinata finds himself staring at a milkbox in his hand. It has a funny design: it has a crayon drawing of a sun at the upper right corner of the box, and in the middle of it are also crayon drawings of a boy and a girl. Its brand name is written at the top of the boy and girl. It is kind of ridiculous, to Hinata at least, but he can’t help but frown at it.
Hinata ends up throwing the milkbox away, but the cat drags the milkbox with it all the way home. Only God knows how it did that.
It is during the first day of training camp that Hinata has his worst dream yet.
He is running up a flight of stairs. He can’t see anything, though; he just knows he is running. He knows he is going up somewhere, and he does reach that “somewhere.”
At the school’s rooftop.
Or so he thinks, Hinata isn’t sure. His surroundings are blurry, like static, like a very old videotape struggling to play its long forgotten scenes. The muddy colours and the feel of the wind are the only things that help him recognise he is in the school’s rooftop.
A flash of black catches his attention, and Hinata finds himself staring at someone’s figure. He is blurry, static, and purely black like shadow. Standing at the edge of the rooftop, quiet and unmoving, and as light as a feather when he falls forward, like the wind pushing him and gravity creeping its arms around him, pulling him down, fast and swift, and leaving no room for Hinata to scream.
He does still scream, though. Eyes open and screaming his lungs out until he can’t breathe. Hinata gags and he doubles over, wheezing, his chest in pain, but he continues screaming. He can hear other sounds, too. He can hear Ennoshita scrambling over towards him, can hear Tsukishima running outside and yelling for the adults to come, and can hear Yamaguchi screaming for water, but none of it mattered. Hinata can only listen to his voice as he screams one name. Just one name.
Kageyama.
Hours later, Hinata finds himself standing in front of his house, in front of his mother. The cat sits beside her, blue eyes staring up at him. Hinata’s eyes feel dry. Too dry, like a bucket of sand was poured into his eyes.
He doesn’t sleep for three days.
Hinata is still at the school’s shoe lockers when he sees the cat, his cat, climb up the stairs towards the second floor.
The sun is still up by then, but Hinata is going home already. He isn’t allowed to attend practice or to stay in school for too long. It is just for a few days, though. They say Hinata has been too tired, too fatigued, and he has to rest up. Well, they didn’t say he isn’t allowed to follow his cat that is going to be caught by the school staff if he doesn’t chase after it, so he goes and follows his cat.
Arriving at the second floor of the school, Hinata sees the cat climb outside the nearest window. Running to it and sticking his head out, he sees it continue its climb up, using the wall to do its bidding. Hinata makes a face. Cats are so fucking weird.
He continues climbing using the stairs, careful not to miss his cat that just keeps on climbing and climbing on the school walls, until he reaches the door leading to the school’s rooftop.
He stares at the doorknob, thinking twice about this. Hinata always avoids the rooftop. He doesn’t know why, though, but he does. He always does, although back in middle school, his favourite place to spend lunch in was the rooftop. Hinata bites his lip hard, too hard that he ends up drawing blood from it. Never mind that; he just has to go and look for his cat. What is so wrong with it, right?
Hinata turns the knob, breathing heavily, and swings the door open.
The sun is setting, colours of red and orange and yellow painting the city, and the sky is washed over by blue and violet and indigo. The colours of warmth and cold clash; it stings Hinata’s eyes, and it leaves him breathless.
He takes one shaky step towards the rooftop, and a flash of black catches his attention. A figure of something at the edge of the rooftop. Quiet and unmoving, and Hinata stops on his tracks.
His cat waves its tail before turning to face him and jumping off the ledge, walking towards Hinata and purring. Hinata looks at the spot the cat has just vacated, unconsciously walking towards it. His fingers trail the warm spot his cat has sat on.
Someone stood on this same spot before, Hinata can tell, and that someone fell from this same spot. He looks over, and he thinks he can see a body laying at the ground. Head twisted at an impossible angle, blood surrounding it like it was some sort of a halo. It is bitterly funny to Hinata, though, he realised as his vision becomes blurry and his cheeks get wet from the tears rolling down.
Kageyama Tobio was no saint.
“Hey, watcha lookin’ at there?”
Hinata eyed Kageyama curiously as the raven-haired boy snapped his eyes from the rooftop and looked towards him. Hinata raised a questioning eyebrow at him. Kageyama simply scoffed.
“It’s nothing. You’re an idiot.”
“What’s with that? I was just asking, geez!” Hinata said, frowning. Kageyama remained silent, slinging his gym bag over his shoulder as he and Hinata left the gym. They stopped by the shoe racks to put their volleyball shoes in. When Hinata was putting his pair of volleyball shoes in his shoebox, he saw it: a black cat, eyeing him and Kageyama curiously with its dark blue eyes. He blinked at it.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing.” It was a statement by Kageyama, not a question. “Hurry up, dumbass.”
Hinata pointed at the cat he saw, grinning at Kageyama cheekily. “There’s a cat staring at us!”
Kageyama remained unimpressed, though. He looked at the direction Hinata was pointing. “It’s probably just looking at you.”
“No, no. I don’t think so!”
Hinata looked excited, while Kageyama just looked exasperated. They didn’t really have the time to screw around with a cat.
“It’s staring at you, too!” Hinata giggled. “It’s probably thinking ‘hey, that tall guy looks like me.’” Hinata’s voice suddenly dropped lower. “’Only one of us should remain.’”
That earned him a wack on the head from Kageyama.
“Hey!”
“You’re being an idiot!”
“Ugh, you’re so annoying!” Hinata shoved his volleyball shoes into his shoebox before going towards the cat. Kageyama made noises behind him. Probably him screaming at Hinata for being an idiot or something.
Hinata knelt down in front of the cat, a few feet away from it, and started calling it to get close, whistling or whatever people did to call cats. It only stared at him, though. Hinata made a face.
“I don’t think it likes me,” he muttered, sounding disappointed. He heard footsteps behind him, and soon Kageyama stood beside him, arms crossed. Kageyama sighed.
“Let’s just go.”
“No waaaay,” Hinata whined, and Kageyama scowled. “How about you call it?”
Hinata would probably laugh at Kageyama’s face if he didn’t know he was going to get a real punch on the face if he did. “Huh?” Kageyama said.
“Call the cat!” Hinata flailed his arms around. “C’mon, I’ll show you how!”
“Ugh, no. They don’t like me.”
“Geez, just kneel down next to me!”
He yanked Kageyama down so hard, the taller boy ended up tripping and falling over him. A few screaming, another wack on the head, and a slap on the face later, Kageyama and Hinata are huddled next to each other, trying to get the cat to come closer to them, and it did. It stood from its sitting position, walking towards them, and both boys froze. Hinata’s excitement was apparent, but Kageyama kept his excitement in check. The cat walked warily towards them, closer, and closer, until it nuzzled itself against Kageyama’s hand.
“Uoooh, it likes you!” Hinata said too loudly, and Kageyama scowled at him. Hinata laughed. “Don’t make that face! You’ll scare kitty away!”
Kageyama didn’t say anything regarding that. He fell silent, scratching the cat’s neck while it purred with a satisfying mewl. Hinata eyed the other curiously. He was still petting the cat when he glanced at the school’s rooftop again before looking at Hinata.
“Do you think tomorrow the cat will forget about all this?”
Hinata blinked at him, confused. The light atmosphere from before had disappeared with that one simple question. It felt like there was something else behind it.
“Kageyama, what do you mean?”
Kageyama shook his head and looked back the black furred cat, still petting it. “…I was just thinking. Not all cats would come to me like this, you know?”
“Oh,” Hinata muttered, and he looked back at the cat. “I don’t think it would forget us.”
“I see…”
Silence took over that, Kageyama still petting the cat and Hinata watching. The night breeze was cool and calming, and the light the gym provided were too dim, but were enough to highlight Kageyama’s features. His skin was as pale as the moon and his dark blue eyes looked like the universe: endless and beautiful.
“…Hey,” Kageyama muttered, not looking at Hinata, his pretty blue eyes focused on the black cat he was petting. “Don’t forget about me.”
Hinata didn’t understand what he meant that time, but of course he wouldn’t forget him.
He couldn’t possibly forget the boy he loved.
Hinata sits at the edge of the rooftop, on the same spot where Kageyama stood, on the same spot where Kageyama fell. He sits quietly, hazel eyes looking at the sky. Scrutinising, looking for answers.
Angry.
Lonely.
Hinata blinks, and the sky that was once a mixture of orange and blue and red and indigo and yellow is now only blue and black with speckles of white and yellow. Hinata thinks he’s staring into space, but it’s not endless and beautiful. It’s dull and flat. It’s just the night sky. There’s nothing so special about it.
He hears the cat mewl behind him, but he ignores it. He closes his eyes, feels gravity curling its deadly fingers around his feet, and feels the wind under his arms, trying to take him into flight.
Maybe he could fly for the boy that didn’t.